Arizona's Stephen Sambu Eyes NCAA 10,000m Title

Kenyan juco transfer owns season's best time

Three years ago, Stephen Sambu admits he was a bit lost in a foreign land.

When he arrived in the U.S. in the summer of 2008 from his native Kenya, he didn’t know how to use a microwave oven or a washing machine, wasn’t sure about what food to eat, had never run in cold, snowy weather and wasn’t very confident conversing in English.

The Arizona junior has come a long way in three years, both culturally and as a runner. He’s virtually an All-American kid who wears blue jeans and hooded sweatshirts, loves Subway sandwiches and enjoys watching action-hero movies with his teammates. He’s also become one of the of the top distance runners in the NCAA.

After an impressive two-year stint in junior college, Sambu owns the fastest collegiate time in the 10,000m this year and should be a contender in the event at the NCAA championships tonight at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.

“Sometimes there are things I still don’t understand,” says Sambu, who grew up in the village of Kaptagat in Kenya’s Rift Valley province and hasn’t been back home since he arrived in the U.S. “I’m still adjusting. I still have to learn some things, but I’m really enjoying my experience.”

As a runner, he hasn’t had to adjust much. During his two years at Rend Lake College in downstate Illinois, he was nearly undefeated, winning 12 junior national championships in cross country and track from the mile to the 10,000m. Sambu’s juco PRs were very good — 4:08, 13:51 and 28:37 — but they were just a hint of things to come. (He ran his PR in the 10,000m at the 2009 Oregon Relays, where he finished a close third behind the Ducks’ Galen Rupp and Luke Puskedra.)

Under the guidance of Arizona distance coach James Li since last summer, Sambu has become one of the country’s top collegiate runners. (Li developed Bernard Lagat into an NCAA 1500m champion at Washington State in the late 1990s and, more recently Lagat’s younger brother, Robert Cheseret, into a two-time NCAA 5,000m champion at Arizona.) Sambu ran an impressive 27:28.64 on May 1 at the Payton Jordan meet at Stanford, but that still doesn’t make him the odds-on favorite in tonight’s NCAA final. Right behind him on this year’s performance list are fellow Kenyans, Iona junior Leonard Korir (27:29) and Liberty senior Sam Chelanga (28:15), although Chelanga, the defending champion at 10,000m, owns the NCAA record of 27:08 from last year’s Payton Jordan meet.

That trio already has a history. Korir outran Chelanga and Sambu to win the 5,000m at the NCAA indoor meet in March, as all three came home under 13:29. At last fall’s NCAA cross country championships, Chelanga won his second straight title, edging Sambu by four seconds after leaving the lead pack that also included Puskedra (third), Korir (fourth) and Stanford’s Chris Derrick (fifth).

With all of those horses in tonight’s 10,000m field, plus New Mexico’s Keith Gerrard (28:27), a native of the UK, Florida State’s Ciaran O’Lionard (28:32), who hails from Ireland, Western Kentucky's Shadrack Kipchirchir (29:04), also a Kenyan, and Stanford’s Elliott Heath (28:47), the NCAA 3,000m champion indoors and top-ranked 5,000m runner outdoors, it should be a dandy race. Sambu, Korir and Chelanga are the cream of the crop, but the race is likely to start somewhat slow and tactical, which could change things up a bit.

Still, Saturday’s men’s 5,000m should be the best race of the meet. Sambu, Chelanga, Korir, Derrick and Heath are all doubling back in that race, which will be bolstered by the fresh legs of Oklahoma State’s Thomas Farrell, Northern Arizona’s Diego Estrada and Sambu’s Arizona teammate Lawi Lalang, a true freshman who also hails from Kenya. They’re all sub-13:30 guys and if Sambu has his way, it’s going to be a fast race. He and Korir pushed the pace indoors, switching off the lead and keeping the race honest.